Does knowing about the philosophy that is the foundation of chikung make any difference in making progress in chikung?

This is a difficult question to answer because if you know more about the philosophy, you may be trapped in those visions or theories about chikung, especially when practicing a visualization type of chikung. It seems good for us to read a lot about the philosophy of chikung before our practice but these sorts of readings will become some sort of interrupting forces during our practice. This happens because our subconsciousness will work a lot during the practice even though we thought our mind had already been stopped. In this way, the foundation to provide a perfect physical condition through chikung will be more difficult or even impossible to achieve. Our mind is something like a file which sets in motion a specified sequence of paths which govern the manner in which our computer will work. All subsequent procedures we command the computer to do will cuase an interaction with this autoexecutive file. Similarly, if our path in chikung starts with only the physical working process first, then all of our later procedures will only react according to the physical channel instead of the mental channel first. It is very important that we open the physical channel first (before opening the mental channel) because this is the way to let our mind stop working a lot while opening the gateway to enter into the state of emptiness, the starting point of our creative forces and real enlightenment levels. Therefore, we may limit our study of the philosophy of chikung to a general (and not detailed) knowledge. In this way, we will find it much easier to stop thinking about or forget the theory during our practice of chikung, facilitating our entrance into a state of chi from a more holistic point of view. In other words, the letting go of our consciousness about the theory will be the most important thing for us in achieving the real state of chi; if not, then all the chi will only work in our mind instead of in our body and we won't establish a good foundation which can assist us to achieve the highest state through the regular levels and path.

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Chi Kung Culture Society of TAIPEI